


Stupid Cupid

by Prettyburgerprincess



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Damon is the bad guy (kinda), F/M, Implied Consent, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22591609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettyburgerprincess/pseuds/Prettyburgerprincess
Summary: Klaus picked a fight with a Demi-god?Not Caroline's problem.The only cure to his unconsciousness is her love?Problem.Big Problem.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 163





	1. Chapter 1

It was going to be exactly what Caroline needed.

The bath was running with the Lush bomb ready to be deployed, the champagne was waiting on the round table by the tub. There was a brand new vibrator plugged in the wall, waiting to take her away from the hellish life she'd been leading. An assortment of her favorite blood bags stacked in neat piles in her mini-fridge.

The fire hadn't been easy to work out, and she stacked another log on top to try and make sure it still burned by the time she was done with the tub. It was a little chilly, there, in the mountains. Though the room itself was perfect for her singular needs (or evidently, the honeymoon suite it was supposed to be), it was not heated enough for the comfort of someone who wanted to soak away misery.

Caroline slipped her jeans down and folded them neatly, hanging them in half over a coat hanger. Socks came off and were tossed in the hamper - yes, she brought her own - followed by her jumper and t-shirt peeled off with it. She unhooked the closures on her bra, and shimmied out of her panties, reaching up to tie her hair into an updo.

Which was, of course, when Klaus came crashing through the door.

He was frantic, eyes hybrid yellow as they swept the room (straight over her like she wasn't naked and glowing by a fire, which was RUDE). Pointed teeth gleamed through the sleek stripes of blood left on his gums, a mess of it in a thick spill on his chin. He shut the door with a bang behind him, fell to one knee clutching against his skull with his own bloody nails, then tipped face first onto the floor.

All of it was done before she could even yell at him. Which was... immensely dissatisfying.

"Klaus, if this is one of those stupid attempts to get in my pants," she muttered, plucking her bathrobe from the hanger to wind it tightly around her body. "I'm already out of my pants."

Hands stamped on her hips as she approached, expecting a laugh, or a snipe, or a flirtation. Anything but silence. When he remained still and lifeless, her eyes sought out any sign of injury. The blood she could smell on him wasn't his - she thought maybe it smelt like a witches', but not - and there was a soft pink, powdery residue dusting on the inside of his collar where it wasn't damp with snow.

"Hey, how are you here? Have you been following me? Because that's weird and gross." Her arms unfurled as she crouched beside him and poked his shoulder. "Hey. _Hey_. What are you doing? Am I in trouble? Should I put pants on?"

The stream of her steaming bath was falling into a deep water that was dangerously close to the point of no return. She got up and turned the taps off, keeping him in her sight always in case he was doing something nefarious and Klaus-like.

He wasn't moving. Very not Klaus-like. But he wasn't grey and veiny, or bursting into flames, so he wasn't dead, dead.

"I have taken no time to myself for five years, and the one time I do, you know what I don't need? Your shit." The stern words even rang true. The plan had been to order delicious food at overpriced restaurants, see the magnificent nature with her vampire eyes, read her plethora of books, and spoil herself with peace and orgasms. "So, it was nice to see you, but can you wake up and-?"

When she hauled him over, the glaze of his wide open eyes gave her a fright.

Hilarious, as she was a supremely dangerous vampire, and he was (politely) incapacitated.

His chin had smeared witch blood in the carpet and there was a touch of the pale pink dust on the hollow of his throat. Her hand stretched toward it, curious that it didn't have a particular smell, when his phone vibrated in his chest pocket.

A little snooping never hurt. Hopefully it was someone who could come and get him.

"Niklaus-" said a devastated brother on the other end of the line. "Brother. Tell me you made it. Are you safe?"

Caroline chewed her lower lip.

"Like, he's here, but he sure isn't with me," she tried. "I don't know about safe."

A shocked intake of air sucked into the mouth of someone on his end. It seemed distinctly feminine, but she couldn't be sure.

"To whom," Elijah pressed, his tone lowering in pitch. "Am I speaking?"

"Oh, sorry. It's me. I mean, it's - sorry, I forget we didn't hang out." She slapped a hand to her head, and gave it a rub. "I'm from Mystic Falls - I went to the Mikealson ball with Klaus. I'm-"

" _Caroline_ ," he said, and breathed out. "Yes, _of course_."

There were blurred voices in the back; she heard them relating to each other that he was safe, that he'd made it in time, that he had found the cure. Some lady heaved a huge sigh and muttered about being too young for a heart attack.

"Are you guys okay?" she asked slowly.

"We were expecting bad news," Elijah explained. "Are you alright?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm fine. Klaus is-..." Her eyes landed on his statuesque face. "Less, fine."

"Is he conscious?"

"Catatonic," she decided, peering at him. "His eyes are still open but the pupils are huge. It's creepy as hell. He looks like a doll, but not one of the nice ones. Like a stabby one. Like he's gonna move if I don't keep watching him."

"Does he look like Chucky?" called a male voice. British. Vaguely familiar. Sort of what she remembered Kol's voice being like. Her rational brain supplied that they must've known a lot of people who spoke their specifically eclectic accent. Definitely wasn't Kol, 'cuz Kol was crispy vampire flakes.

"Actually, yeah." She cocked her head. "If I squint."

She heard a collection of laughs, and nearly felt the break of tension in the room. It was as though they had been holding a collective breath.

"You could shave his eyebrows off," teased the not-Kol voice. "It'd be fun."

"Until he wakes up, it probably will be. He is gonna wake up, right? He's gonna be okay?" she asked, trying to make it sound blasé. It had never worked for her too expressive voice - she sounded worried. To try and distract from that, she went on, slightly more annoyed than strictly true: "Because I have a bubble bath with my name on it, I'm not sharing, and I have a date."

_With a vibrator._

"A date?" echoed a lady's voice.

_And the buttplug._

"Yeah. You know. Wine and dine, have a good time." Ugh. "I'm on holidays, don't judge me."

"I'd never, darling," cooed the not-Kol-voice, incredibly like Kol. "Every woman deserves a little night out."

She cleared her throat.

"But, just so I don't, you know, end up with a third wheel... Is Klaus okay?"

"He's going to be," Elijah told her. "He made it there by the very skin of his teeth."

"Oh, well, if this is the mission accomplished, I don't want to know what the alternative looks like."

"Grim," supplied the Kol-voice.

"He would've been turned to stone," Rebekah told her more honestly. (Caroline couldn't ever forget her voice, no siree.) "Cast forever in the visage of kneeling to our father, with a sword pierced through his chest."

Caroline blinked.

" _Who_ has he stirred up now?"

The relief in Elijah's breathy chuckle was not missed. 

"He got into a brawl with a demigod."

"Yeah," she said fairly. "I can't say I'm surprised, exactly? Like, demigods are real and _that's_ surprising. But demigod brawling sounds like a Klaus thing to do."

"Doesn't it just?" Elijah said, very amused. "Do forgive me, Caroline. Let me sort out business here, and then I'll call you back."

"Hang on," she said. "You're just going to leave me with the unconscious hybrid? If there's a thing out there that can take out Klaus, I'm not going to be able to handle it alone. Am I in trouble?"

"That rather depends."

It was too casual for her to not be worried. In her experience, the old ones were always the ones who didn't freak out at the most appropriate times. Bomb loaded with silver shrapnel and wooden splinters? Oh, avoid this general space. The discontinuation of a particular brand of cereal? Murder the CEO.

"Listen, what I don't need from you is detached smugness," she told him sternly. "What trouble are we in, over here, and should I be calling in some back up?"

"Have you touched him?" The voice was not Elijah's pleasant one. It was a husky female one, fast and low with concern.

"I rolled him over, and there was some nudging with my toe. Why?"

"Can you see the powder on him?" At her hum of agreement, the woman went on. "It's not on you?"

"No," she said, looking at her hands back and front. "Why?"

"Don't touch it," Elijah told her. "Stay there. I'll call his phone back when I can."

"I think the fuck not," she said frankly. "If you hang up on me now, I'm not answering it again, and Klaus can suck it."

The noise in the background sort of halted at her volume. Due to the nature of loudspeakers and how they received sound, she could hear the creak of a leather seat, but nothing else.

"What can I do for you, Caroline?" Elijah said. To his credit, he sounded unruffled, completely patient. Totally the opposite of what she had been expecting, given that he was Klaus' brother.

"You could tell me how Klaus found me, because we haven't even spoken in years," she pointed out. "You could tell me if I can wake him up, or if he's hurt and he just can't say anything, or if the big bad demigod is chasing him and we need to hide, or prepare with some old school voodoo hoodoo trick that you know from before voodoo had a name, or what the powder is and what it can do to me. Literally anything other than 'I'll call you back' would be nice."

There was a pause.

" _That's_ Caroline?" said a bewildered voice.

Before she could snap a question back, Elijah's smooth voice filled her ear.

"You're safe," was the first thing he said. "As far as I'm aware, Niklaus will not be part of the waking world for some time. I doubt he'll feel anything, if at all, in his state."

"Why is he-?" She didn't know how to phrase it. "He came in here like a bat out of hell, scared me half to death, and fell over. He didn't even see me." If someone called out the sulky note in her voice, she would pretend it was because she was annoyed he'd ruined her night, not because he hadn't cared she was naked.

"He would've seen you," the woman said, equally patient and soothing.

"This is my sister Freya," Elijah introduced.

"You have another sister?" she blurted. "What the hell? How did Rebekah handle that?"

"Excuse me?" Rebekah said abruptly. "What are you worried about me for? Why don't you ask about Klaus?"

"Oh come on, I paid attention while you were there. Which is why I'm guessing there's a long story about why there was never any mention of a sister called Freya when we were all... hanging out."

"That doesn't explain why you thought about me," Rebekah said primly.

"Because I know Klaus wouldn't have trusted her. He would've gone straight for the doom and gloom with a side of paranoid. Everyone is always out to kill Klaus. Duh." She pursed her lips. "I asked about you because you're the only girl and you're the favorite."

"I rather resent that," said the not(?) Kol voice.

"There is a long story, and there's time to tell it later," Elijah told her fairly. "Along with other pertinent information. Right now, Caroline, you should stay close to Klaus. He'll need company to assist with the process."

"What process?"

"Let's call it healing," Freya said. "It's part of the long story."

"Can't I get someone else to babysit?" she bartered.

"Don't you want to help?" asked a new voice. A male's voice, deep and rich. "Aren't you two friends?"

"Friends is-... Not wrong," she said slowly. "It's just not _right_ , either. I haven't seen him in a long time, and we don't talk, or anything."

"Because you never returned his call," Rebekah said snidely. "How are you supposed to chat if one of you never chats back?"

Oh, she was _not_ getting into that can of worms.

Pulling herself up to straighten her back, Caroline felt a swell of temper crest in her head.

"I am _not_ about to dip a toe into Klaus-infested waters if this is going to be a _thing_. I have plans, and if your brother thinks he's going to crash my party with his dramatic shenanigans, _again_ , I'm going to drag him out to the ravine and toss him head first-!"

"It needs to be someone Klaus feels close to," said a woman's voice. "Some magic thing. I don't know, I'm not a witch or anything, but the books said so." 

"It is crucial," Freya agreed. "He wouldn't have been drawn to you if you weren't the one he needed to be with."

"I know we haven't met yet, but I am excited to finally get the chance," the woman (who was apparently not a witch) said warmly. "Klaus has told me a lot about you. You're really important to him, Caroline. Not to say you owe him anything for that. But I think that if you showed up unconscious on his floor, he wouldn't worry about the date or the champagne."

Caroline rubbed her head.

"Call me back when you know something," she said lamely. "I'll Klaus-sit tight until then."

"Much obliged," Elijah said, and hung up.


	2. Chapter 2

Ringing in her ears was weird, especially for a vampire. She knew it had to be psycho-somatic, because no bombs had gone off. Well, like a metaphorical one, maybe.

"I'm so sorry," she said, quite politely. "I completely misheard that, which is super weird because I'm a vampire who should be able to hear you. Say it again?"

Ringing. _Loud_. Like a persistent chime of a bell that sat directly in her inner ear cavity. She nodded, as though she understood.

"Wow, that's a weird thing that keeps happening. One more time?"

Again, the high chime of a bell. The whole world was quiet. Her eyes fell to Klaus, laid out flat on the bed, sweating and still. His face was awash with poor color, and his chest was rising and falling rapidly.

"This is so weird, I keep mishearing you." She looked at Freya with no discernible expression. "I keep hearing you say Klaus is in love with me."

"That's because it's what I'm saying," Freya winced.

Freya the... eldest... Mikealson.

Standing next to... Kol... who was supposed to be like... super dead.

She blinked, nodded, and took the drink Elijah was already offering, polishing it off before her wobbly legs pitched and landed her ass on the side of the bed not occupied by an unconscious hybrid. She passed it back and was grateful that he straight up just put his own full glass in her hand.

It sloshed a little with her trembling, but every drop made its way into her mouth and gulped down her throat. She held on to the glass, staring into the empty shell of it, unable to speak.

"That sure is a weird thing I keep hearing," she told it mindlessly.

"This isn't going well," Freya mentioned.

"No, not the word I would have picked," Kol mused. His footsteps were leisurely and took him to her side, lounging on the bed with their knees touching. Elijah tipped the neck of a bottle to her glass and poured a generous slog, and Kol waited until she was nose deep in it before saying: "Also, you need to resuscitate him with the power of your loving embrace."

Caroline hummed an inquisitive noise around the chugging, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. The alcohol was burning, but it was kind of helping. When Elijah poured her another glass, she didn't immediately drain it.

"What?" was her rasping reply.

"Gently, brother," Elijah advised.

"Judging by the sick look on her face, no amount of gentle is about to make her feel any type of better for what the solution is," Kol mused.

"Oh, I'm not sick," Caroline said automatically. Except her entire stomach was churning and her ears were still gonging like a bell had been bashed inside her skull.

"You might be," Kol said lightly. "When I mention that the cure is-"

"I think," Elijah interrupted. "Caroline might need a moment to come to grips with what she's just learned, before we further explain the situation at hand."

"No, no, I'm good, this is fine, I'm totally fine," she said, staring without blinking at the floor. She swallowed a mouthful of bourbon. "Hit me."

"The short of it, darling," Kol explained. "Is that you'll need to become one with my brother to break the magic over him."

"Become one," she repeated. "Like, bite him?"

"No. You'll need to go to bed with him."

Caroline screwed up her nose.

"How is _sleeping_ going to help him wake up?"

"Oh, this isn't good," Freya murmured, possibly not meant for vampire ears.

"Not to sleep, although you might earn yourself the nap on the other side of the process," Kol agreed. "Given that you'll be doing all the work until you both reach nirvana."

"Nirvana?" The word had barely finished sounding out of her mouth when she realized what he meant. Every muscle in her body went tight, and she turned so quickly to look at him that her neck popped in two different places. She had expected the teasing look on his face - she didn't expect it to fall when he saw her dawning horror.

"It's old magic, and old magic requires old solutions," Freya explained quickly. Her boots were super cute. Knee high, faux-leather, a soft grey with a solid silver spike for the heel. Against the rest of her super hippy witch thing, they were an eclectic choice. "Given that love magic is generally all about lovers, and lovers tend to-"

"I like your boots," Caroline told the leather toes in front of her.

"...Thanks. They're new." A foot arched and showed off the heel, making Caroline hum in agreement to a statement that hadn't been spoken. "They have a tan pair with a gold detail I think would look nicer on you."

"Oh, I'd like that, yeah." She sipped her drink. Looked at the trembling glass. The liquid inside was rippling like the scene out of the first Jurassic Park movie. "Uhm. Yeah, I like... I'd like those boots better for me. These are nice on you. But the brown and gold pair would suit me better."

"As much as I'm interested in fashion choices, I feel it pertinent to mention that Klaus will perk right up and assist you to the end," Kol persisted, catching her eye. "Once he finishes. Inside you, of course."

Caroline swallowed the rest of her drink, holding it in her mouth with bulging cheeks for a second. She let it burn. Getting it down her throat made her stomach lurch, but that also could've been because she was thinking about the whole situation.

"What demigod did this?" she grumbled.

"Cupid," Elijah said. He refilled her glass, and sat on her other side, a consoling hand resting on her knee.

"Apparently not a chubby little bloke in a diaper," Kol pointed out. "Much more a sleek immortal with a penchant for violence against those who will not bend their knee to his arrows. He's stuck Klaus only twice in all the years he's been alive, and he's very cross that he's being ignored."

"Klaus thought it would be an easy fight," Freya continued in a murmur. She settled on her knees in front of Caroline, catching her eye. Her smile was warm, if a little awkward. "He did win, but Cupid was prepared for that."

"A lover, not a fighter," Kol teased. "He suspected dear brother would best him, so he marked him with enough of that powder to render him useless outside of his love."

Caroline turned away from Freya's pretty, open face with a cringe. Her knee stopped touching Kol, and she shakily pushed Elijah's hand away from her, twisting up to skip nervously to the window and look out of it.

His New Orleans, huh?

The drink was decimated and set aside loudly. She pressed two hands over her mouth and tried to breathe through her nose, but her lungs were demanding more air than the two narrow passages of her nostrils would permit.

Bracing both on the window pane, she looked out the window to the street below, where there was a band of children skillfully playing a bunch of upside down buckets and boxes as instruments. The beat itself was something she would willingly describe as groovy; had she been in a better frame of mind, she might've gone down and danced to it with the other tourists who were jigging along.

"Uhm," she said, finally. "Let's stop using that word, okay? It's freaking me out."

"What word?" Kol prodded.

"The 'L' word," she muttered.

"The hangup isn't the unconscious sex, then?" Kol prodded. "It's the part where he's in love with you?"

Caroline flapped both hands in his direction, then snatched the curtains and shut them tight. The drumming rhythm on the street wasn't lost just because she couldn't see it; its rapid pace filled her chest the way a beating heart might've.

Turning her back on them all didn't help - there was a vanity there and the mirror showed them all waiting. Freya standing, her unfairly huge Disney Princess eyes mournful and concerned; Elijah sitting neatly, a hand around his own drink, dark gaze fixed on her own; and Kol, lounging, a confused twist to his lowered brow.

"Don't you want him to love you?" Kol guessed.

Sharply, Caroline turned from the mirror and walked straight for the door.

"Well this was fun, good luck, I don't think I'm gonna-"

"Caroline," Elijah said gently.

Why did it make her stop? He really had no reason to be that calm and composed, really. Her entire world was like, falling apart. He wasn't asking her to do something easy, and he hadn't physically stopped her, like she knew he was totally able to.

Oh god, what if they _compelled her_?

With her sweaty hand slipping on the knob of the door, Caroline glanced back and pulled it open. Ready to walk out. She only stopped because she was very aware that against two Originals and a witch, she had little to say about anything. If they wanted the opposite of her leaving, there were so many ways to make her obey.

"No more 'L' word," Elijah promised her.

Her lip wobbled. Every muscle in her back tightened, and she rubbed her mouth with a rough hand, actively scrubbing away the awful tell of her fear. She thrust up her chin at them all, eyes feeling hot, though not watery.

Trying to inject a touch of bite into her voice didn't work. It only came out as a wobbly demand.

"Did _he_ know?"

"I think he suspects his feelings are not the usual selfish kind," the favorite brother assured her softly. "It's no secret how smitten he is by you."

"Not - that part." There was no way she was willingly going to consider ' _that part_ '. The 'L' word. Hearing it from someone else's mouth, before she'd heard it from him... before she felt that way in return. It hurt. "Did he know what I have to do to wake him up?"

"Cupid mentioned-" Freya stopped, and reconfigured her sentence. Caroline could see that dreaded 'L' lingering on the fringes. " _Trust_. There are not many people Klaus ... trusts."

"But he of course, thought that winning would negate the effects," Kol mused. "He was well aware, darling, that he was doing a severe amount of _pining_ mid-brawl, which kept him good and distracted for Cupid to toss about for a bit. When he won, he demanded the cure. Cupid told him he knew what the cure was, and it was not something that just anyone could give. Nik said your name, and then he started running."

She swallowed. 

"That doesn't mean yes," she said slowly.

"After the brawl, Klaus knew full and well what he needed, and what state he'd be in, because Cupid told us and we called him," Kol told her. "I'm guessing he would've reached out if he had your number."

Oh, no.

"My phone was off," she muttered.

That was just - an awful thing to consider. That he'd needed her, and had been close to some sort of damage because of needing her, and she had been busy with a tub and champagne. Her hand dipped into her pocket and took off the airplane mode; texts and calls and notifications lit up her screen, a persistent vibrating and chiming mess.

Her eyes flicked up to them, sheepish as it dinged and chirped and buzzed back to life.

"Jesus," Kol snickered, glancing over his shoulder at Klaus' unresponsive body. "I understand you weren't quite yourself, brother, but that's a bit much."

"This isn't him," Caroline defended. "This is everyone else."

"How long was your phone off?" Freya said curiously.

"It was the first thing I did when I landed, so... like six hours?"

The dawning of how hectic her life was seemed to hit them all at the same time. Her vampire eyes could barely read the notifications popping up on the screen for the next one to take its place. In the end, she had to wait a solid twenty seconds for the noise to cease.

Nothing from Klaus in her texts. But there was a missed call from The Big Bad Wolf, and yes, he had left her a voice message.

Stomach turning, she stared at the number that indicated the ten seconds that she would be listening to when she got up the lady balls to press play. Her back leaned against the door frame, the screen glowing with one lagging text as it came through to her phone. Without meaning to, her eyes found Klaus' heaving chest on the bed, and the strained tendons in his neck.

"Is he in pain?" Her eyes went wide. "Wait, is he - is he hurting?"

"No," Freya told her.

"He won't be comfortable," Kol corrected bluntly. "And we can't say for certain he isn't dreaming, or having some ordained experience, because Cupid treated this like a threat. He seemed very amused by the distance Klaus had to travel to reach you."

Elijah stood and drew her attention, buttoning his neat coat as he went. The smile he gave her was disturbingly private; it felt like a privilege and a curse, to be known to this man, in this capacity. Though she didn't cower from his approach, she kinda wanted to.

He laid a very gentle kiss on both her cheeks, and cupped her face.

"Klaus thinks of you very fondly," he said evenly. "You would not be taking something from him to engage with him in this capacity. He was aware that his predicament would be solved by you, with this act. Whether or not the nature of the emotion behind it was known to him... is something only he can tell you. Does that do anything to assuage your fear?"

"I'm not scared," she lied, blatantly, in her worst possible 'I'm lying' voice. She winced, knowing that even a kindergartner would have understood her truth. Let alone one of the most powerful, ancient people on the face of the earth, standing less than two feet away, currently staring at her face. "It's - it's just a lot. It's just-... It's... wrong."

"Oh, wait," Kol said with realization in his tone, leaning onto his elbow on the bed. For the first time, he looked passingly humane, a little concern hitched in the middle of his brows. "Are you not currently unattached?"

"Shit," Freya said softly. Her guilty eyes made Caroline shit uncomfortably, feeling pitied and needed and more than a little overwhelmed. "I never even thought to ask. Do you have a partner?"

She turned her face out of Elijah's hands and felt the door frame hit her back, her chin tucked down into her shoulder. She stared resolutely at the ornate leg of the armoire, refusing to acknowledge their expressions any more than she absolutely strictly had to.

"I'm not dating anyone," she admitted.

"So what's the problem then?" Kol prompted. It wasn't pushy - Caroline _knew_ pushy. He was blunt, but genuinely confused. "It's not going to impact you magically to touch him, or anything."

"I've cast over the remnants of the dust on his body," Freya offered. "It's disabled. You won't be altered in any chemical state if you touched it."

"Judging by your empty glass, you will be at least a little wasted though," Kol teased, holding up a thumb and forefinger to indicate her level of oncoming drunkenness.

Well, she heard him shift like he might've, because there was nothing more fascinating to her in the whole world than the leg of the armoire. She wondered how old it was. The knots in the wood spoke to age. Maybe older than Stefan?

Caroline was sure they were waiting for her to say something. Do something. _Anything_. But she just looked at the dresser, and curled her arms over her belly, trying to soften her stance into something less affected. If it had've been in front of Elena, or maybe Damon, they would've fallen for it. It became apparent the Originals weren't so easily fooled.

"Is it... the act itself, giving you pause, or that we're here?" Freya guessed. "Because we _will_ leave-"

"There's absolutely no way I'm sticking around longer than the end of this conversation," Kol scoffed. "Although I quite prefer this quiet version of my dear brother, so if you wanted to delay-"

" _Yes_ ," Caroline blurted. Her eyes found him desperately quick, but she saw only surprise on his features. He had been joking about giving her extra time, but she had thought-... She had thought he would be an ally. When she understood them to be an enemy, she couldn't pinpoint.

Turning away from Elijah made her shoulder hike up near her ear, like he might whip out a hand and grab at her. She stood by the doorway with all her body tight, just trying to think through a panicky sludge.

"You don't want to," Freya said softly. There was no malice, no judgement. Just a little sadness.

"If you don't want to, we won't make you," Kol said hastily. 

"No, of course not," Elijah murmured.

Caroline wasn't convinced. When it came to the Mikealsons, there was never any doubt in her mind that they would go to the ends of the earth for one of their own. Had Rebekah been present, there was no doubt that compulsion would've been employed, and she hadn't been taking any vervain.

"Jesus H," Kol said, hurt coloring his tone. "We won't make you, Caroline. You know that, don't you? You're not - being forced, here."

"I - yeah, no, I- I just- I don't want him to be, out of action, or whatever - but, I just - it's not-..."

If she managed to actually string an entire sentence together, she was sure they would've listened, but her nerves and feelings were all over the place. She felt itchy in a more-than-physical way, her skin crawling, body restless. Every facet of her wanted to leave the room and walk off some of her excess energy, but she was so sure they'd see it as some kind of flat rejection.

"I can look into other means," Freya suggested. "I can try to create a spell to undo this, but the will of a demigod isn't the same thing as magic, so I'm not sure if anything I do will actually work, but I'll try. I might need some of your hair, or a vial of blood, to replicate your essence... You can leave at any time, it's okay."

"But he's- he's not - he's in-?" she stammered. Her hand pressed flat on her chest when she looked at Klaus again, feeling sick at the faint sweat she could see on his visible skin. As though he sensed her looking, his head jerked to the side, facing her more fully. There was already a line between his expressive brows, and it deepened. "He's not - comfortable?"

"So?" Kol said tightly. "That doesn't mean you absolutely must. He got himself into this mess, we'll get him out. It's not worth what you're unwilling to give."

That was her out.

He'd be fine; he was Klaus. Nothing could kill him. And besides, it wouldn't hurt him to take a nap, right? Everyone else in the family had - maybe this was karma being a bitch? Who was she to contest karma?!

"But-..." She struggled. It was - confusing. "You - he could be dreaming? Suffering? I can't _leave him_ like that, if you can't tell me he's not in pain..."

"Caroline," Elijah said, his thousand year old stare penetrative and soothing to her unsettled temper. She felt like he was compelling her, but she knew that her body was under her singular dominion by the fact that she was able to quickly look away. "In no way are you obligated to assist, and no one here will ever consider your refusal worthy of retribution. If you say no, that will be respected, and we can send you back to your holiday before midnight."

"I might give you another one," Kol suggested, voice strained. "Darling, do take that mortified look off your pretty face. This is no big deal. Every day Original life. You understand, he did bare a Hunter's curse for eighty-odd years or some such? This will be just another blip in the road, a century or two from now. He'll be fine. Would you like to go to Fiji? Perhaps soak up some sun?"

Caroline shook her head, a nervous hand rubbing the pounding at her temple, then self-consciously tucking her hair behind her ear.

"It's not that I don't want to help," she stressed. "I don't want - anything bad, for Klaus. I don't want him to suffer or... anything like that. But I can't just - say I _want_ to, either."

"I'm lost," Kol admitted. "You want to help, but you don't want to say as much?"

"She doesn't want to help him in this particular way," Freya gentled the explanation.

"For shame?" Kol queried. Caroline didn't move an inch, but he guessed he was correct, when it was only a third of her current resistance. "Oh, for the love of-"

"Kol," Elijah warned.

"Sex has evolved into such a torrid, forbidden thing. The attitude to physical sex and the nature of pleasure is a mockery of what it is, what purpose it serves, and what it can be." He sat upright on the bed, seeking Caroline's attention. "It's just sex. It is a means of establishing a bond between persons in an intimate capacity - to share a body, move with intent to communicate what cannot be said with words. Whatever words they may be, beginning with 'L' or not."

"Poetic of you, little brother," Elijah acknowledged.

Blinking at the implications, she cast her gaze over Klaus, laying prone. So unlike him. He didn't seem very comfortable at all, because one of his kneecaps had started to twitch and he gave a shuddery breath that made her mouth part as though she could speak his name and rouse him out of it.

"I hate that he's like this," she said instead. "I might pick a fight with a demigod too."

"Take weapons," Elijah said, quite politely. "Fangs can't pierce his skin."

Caroline tucked her hands into her pockets. She more or less understood that she was going to have to sleep with Klaus, at that point. Some of the panic in her had dampened into something less urgent, less fight-or-flight. She took a cautious step toward the bed and saw that the powder on Klaus' chin and throat had changed from pink to a white - it looked a whole lot like icing sugar. Or cocaine.

"That you think any of us would mean to bend your arm to have such a precious gift given to the temperamental brat behind me is an awful joke," Kol told her sourly. He put his elbows on his knees, scowling.

"I don't know any of you. You were a menace, and my friends killed you," she reminded him crisply. She took another step toward the bed and made a sweeping up and down gesture at Freya. " _She_ could be anyone, and she's apparently got magic skills enough to take on a demigod! And Elena might have a high opinion of Elijah - even _after_ he dropped her in a hole with your psychotic sister - but I don't know him outside of Klaus-wrangling, and seeing as he can't wrangle this, what's to say he wouldn't use me?"

Kol was giving her a withering look, but his anger wasn't really for her.

"You'll have to forgive me," Elijah told the back of her head evenly. He was entirely too calculated. She missed Klaus, his open book of a face, and that she never had to second guess what he was feeling - only what he would or wouldn't do. "I thought the affections between you were mutual, and I should've prefaced this conversation with confirming what I thought I knew. For that, I am very sorry. You needn't be frightened for handling Niklaus in his present state; there is always another way to remedy these things, and we aren't without resources."

They didn't get it. How could they? It wasn't just that she was scared they would force her into something that she didn't want, that made her want to run or hide. That was like... part of her problem.

"Nor would we think any less of you for accepting," Freya mentioned. "And what happens in this room will only ever be known by you, and who you tell it to. It was our nearest friends who were assembled to watch the brawl, and they don't know who you know."

But that didn't matter. It wasn't the whole of her problem. The biggest thing she was dealing with was:

"I didn't know he felt that way about me."

"What?" Kol said, swiveling to watch her take carefully measured steps. "Of course you knew. He never stopped going on and on about you. I'm pretty sure he even told you so at the ball, how he felt about you."

"No, he said he fancied me," she muttered. Like a stunned deer to the dazzling headlight of a speeding car, she crossed the room to him. "That's a crush. A- a fling. _That_ is not _this_."

Like, she would front as being bothered by him to everyone else in Mystic Falls - given when he was there he was a full-tilt psycho and killed Tyler's mom, Elena's aunt, amongst a whole bunch of other truly horrible acts she was _still mad about_ \- but it didn't matter how she went on about not feeling attracted to him, because he was well aware that she was more than tickled at his attention.

He knew. He just - knew. He knew things about her and he never-... he never cared about her hard edges. He understood them.

He admired her blood lust and he never doubted loyalty to her friends. Jealousy was so common to him he thought hers was cute. He had worshiped her amongst all the other much more gorgeous people in his long life... He had promised to wait for her to find herself. That he'd be there when she was ready to find him.

There were a lot of things about Klaus that she had tried to forget; their conversation about _waiting_ had been the Worst Best Thing anyone had ever done for her.

"I missed this part in Mikealson history," Freya said with a tentative smile. "Do you want to fill me in on what your side of the story was?"

Caroline swallowed.

"It was just a crush," she said faintly. "I told him _no_. He thought it was fun. That's all."

"That was not all," Kol informed his sister.

Caroline moved like Klaus might come awake at any second and hiss at her, or that her mere presence might upset him. He only continued to sweat and breathe heavily, the kneecap no longer twitching beneath his jeans. She sat by his legs, staring at the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the breathing that made him seem so sick.

"I don't know what we had," she admitted to the room. "Like, sue me. I thought it was a stupid Alpha ego thing. I was dating Tyler, and Tyler was Klaus' pack, so..."

"So you thought he was just trying to win you?" Freya guessed.

Caroline nodded slightly, almost embarrassed.

"I figured out it was more," she added. "But later. Hindsight. I looked back and saw that he was genuine about me, but I didn't know why. I still don't know why."

"Did he court you?" Freya prompted. "Was he being kind?"

"Yeah," she said, uneasily. "I mean - the situation was... not great. He wanted to kill my best friend and he was in total control of the love of my life."

"It sounds complicated," Freya murmured.

"It wasn't so difficult from his side of things," Kol mentioned. He seemed to be weighing her differently, but she wasn't sure she could put her finger on just what it was he was considering. "Although, having recently fallen for the love of my life, perhaps I can view this again in a different lens."

"That's good," she breathed out. Startled, she looked up at him. "That you found someone. Not-... Not the other thing. Is she a human?"

"A witch," he corrected, and didn't bother to dampen his childish smile. New fire glittered in his eyes and he gave an upsettingly dashing grin at her. "Davina. You actually spoke to her on the phone earlier."

"I thought she said she was not a witch?"

"That was Klaus' therapist, Camille," Elijah supplied.

Caroline looked back toward Klaus, feeling his muscles contract hard in his calf, causing his foot to spasm to the side. She was near enough to the jean clad leg - still damp with the snow he'd clearly run through to get to her. Her hand curled around the muscle and he seemed to breathe a little easier.

"Therapist is good," she muttered.

"If I had been tormenting Davina's best friend, manipulating her loved ones, and harassing her town... I think she may never have given me the time of day. She barely wanted to pay me any mind initially as it stands." Kol gave the hand on Klaus' calf a thoughtful look, bereft of any particular judgement. "Even now, if I laid hands on Marcel, or on Joshua, knowing full well that she loves me most... she wouldn't stand for it. What a tricky romantic predicament, indeed."

"I can't imagine Klaus being overly romantic." Freya's nose scrunched.

"Klaus can be anything he needs to be when he wants something," Caroline said warily. She looked at his face. The line between his brows softened when her thumb stroked the hard bone of his shin. "He was probably more romantic than you think, because he was tailor fitting himself to my _exact_ brand of romance. It was infuriating."

"That part wasn't falsified," Elijah chided quietly. "That's what he's like."

"Sure," she said, not even bothering to attempt to hide her disbelief.

For a little while, nothing was said.

She just watched the hybrid's resting face and listened the still deep but no longer labored breathing. Far be it for Caroline to look too deeply into it, but even she realized that he seemed settled by her proximity alone.

Her head was still ringing from the shock.

The bed was inviting beneath her weight, but with an audience and an immortal, unconscious one-night-stand, she wouldn't dare even think about using it for purposes other than what she was tasked with.

One thing was very clear: she knew that she couldn't make herself leave him. She wanted to help.

"So when he wakes up," she said slowly. "Will that be it?"

"He'll be safe from any further affects the powder may of had," Freya assured her.

"Yeah I get that, but I'm gonna be able to leave again, right?" Flicking her eyes at them all made her very aware that they had no idea what she was referring to.

"No one will keep you against your will," Elijah informed her. "Let alone when Niklaus regains consciousness."

"That's not what I mean," she said, strained. Thinking of words was hard, when she really didn't want to explain what she was actually worried about. "Will he know?"

"He'll wake up buried inside you," Kol pointed out with a cheeky smirk. "So I'm assuming he'll understand the deed has come to pass."

"Not about the - sex," she clarified. "The - other thing. The 'why it has to be me', thing."

"The 'L' word?" Freya muttered.

"Yeah," she said tightly. The fabric under her hand suddenly demanded her attention, and she studied it like she was new to the concept of denim. "Will he know it's about-? That I know the-... the whole thing, will he know it's like, I know that it's a- thing, about-"

"Cupid didn't phrase it using the 'L' word," Freya said, wincing at the second hand embarrassment from Caroline's poor attempt at communication. "He said his arrow had struck true, and that Klaus knew where he was best adored, but further than that he didn't say anything about how you might feel."

"No, no, not like that," Caroline said quickly. "No, I don't - _I don't_ -? I mean about _him_. His feelings."

"You want to know if Klaus will understand you now know his true feelings?" Elijah decoded.

"Yeah, that." Caroline was pretty sure she could break out in hives, possible vampire responses be damned. Her skin felt oddly hot and scratchy, like some evil ghost birds were pecking and clawing at her at random.

"Wait." Freya's soft word made Caroline glance at her sheepishly. Those big, soulful eyes blinked slowly, processing the request, settling on just one question. "You don't want Klaus to know you understand his feelings for you?"

"No," she muttered.

"Why?" Kol asked, bewildered. "What harm could possibly come of it? Even if you don't return the favor, you could hold it against him. He wouldn't hurt you. So why would that be a problem, that you were both on the same page?"

Caroline didn't know how to explain... because she wasn't sure herself.

Darting her eyes between the siblings, unsure of her defense, or their reaction, she waited for someone else to make a move.

Klaus had been put through the wringer all his life, and he deserved a chance to have nice things, and be given a chance to be good, and loved. No one understood that more so than Elijah, who had lost the soft, ultimately pleased look on his face. Now it was replaced by one of caution, and Caroline felt her hand flinch away from Klaus' leg.

She stood, taking a step away from the eldest brother.

"It wasn't spoken of." The underlying tone of his voice was not happy. She already regretted seeing how soft he had been for her - now made marble for the potential harm he thought she was capable of. "I can swear to you that I won't mention as much to him. I can't predict if he were to figure you out."

"I don't understand why it'd be a problem," Kol said again. "But if it's holding you back then by all means. I won't say anything either."

Caroline nodded absently, folding her arms around her belly again. There was no where she considered safe to look, any more. She just-... didn't feel safe. She wanted it to be over with, already.

"Oh, okay," she breathed. "Uhm, I guess I'll do it, then."

"That's not inspiring," Kol said quickly. "You don't have to do it right now. Let the booze settle you a little more."

"No, no I just - I want to just - do it," she mumbled. "I just - want it done, wake him up, and leave. I'll be able to go, straight after, won't I?"

"Yes, of course," Freya said, puzzled. Though Caroline couldn't see the Mikealson witch, she felt the weight of her gaze drilling into the side of her face. "Elijah has promised you, and I will too. No one will keep you here against your will. Why would you not be able to leave?"

"Ah." Kol's short noise of realization made Caroline startle. "It isn't that she won't be able to leave. It's only a concern if Nik knows what she knows. Klaus will want to talk to her about that awful 'L' word, and we can't even say it in front of her."

Caroline was very uncomfortable with the idea that she had been so transparent in front of these people. Being discovered felt like a betrayal her own face had made. To do some work to hide her expression, she turned to the other window in the room and gave the assembled Mikealsons her back.

Her hands were shaking so much it was a miracle she didn't straight up pull the heavy curtain off the iron rod. Snapping them shut, she fussed for way too long on making the overlap of fabric sit neatly. At least by the time that was done she could get her fingers through her hair, dragging it away from her over-heated neck without accidentally yanking any out.

She looked at Klaus on the bed, feeling nausea crest in her belly, and discreetly checked the door behind her lead to a bathroom. Just in case there was an emergency vomit situation.

"Okay," she said. "You can go now."

"We can put some loud music on," Kol said. "Do you have a preference?"

"No thanks." She couldn't look at them. Even the mirror on the vanity across from her was giving her the severe feeling of being judged, and all she saw in it was her own reflection.

"We can get some blood for you?" Elijah suggested.

"No, thanks," she said, a little firmer. Her eyes were stuck to Klaus' hand, and all the blue veins beneath his gleaming skin. "I'm fine."

"It'll be okay." Freya gave her a warm smile that seemed incredibly sad against her eyes. "I-... I feel as though I should thank you, but it feels very wrong."

"Don't thank me," she said quickly. "It's really - fine. You can go."

_Before I lose my nerve, guys._

"I don't think we should," Kol protested. "You clearly don't want to do this but you've resolved yourself to. It doesn't sit easy with me that you'll be in here, feeling as though you're being violated -"

"I'm _fine_ ," she repeated, a little bit louder. "I'm not going to leave him like this when I can help, and I don't know he isn't suffering. Please get out, now."

"He isn't in any pain," Freya said kindly. Her hand took Kol's shoulder and guided him into standing. "This is no urgent thing. Take your time - no one will interrupt."

"We can just wait," Kol pressed, though he was following his sister's lead as she moved him to the door. "We can just sit and talk, if you'd prefer - soothe your nerves, some."

Clearing her throat, Caroline peered over their collective shoulders to see the bourbon was still pretty full, despite her best attempts to get it in her belly earlier. It would do the trick to numb the thinking portion of her brain. Edging around the bed, she deposited the hoodie over the metal frame of it and picked up the bottle by the neck to take a healthy swallow.

"There. Nerves are on the way to being soothed, and not a Mikealson to blame." She clutched the glass in both hands, staring at them each in turn. Not that she managed to look them in the eyes, at all, but merely nodded and fixed a tried and true Miss Mystic smile on her face. "I'll be done as soon as possible, so can someone organize to get me back to the mountain when I come downstairs?"

Silence.

It was palpable.

She took another long swallow from the bottle, but only more silence greeted her. Clinking her fingernails against the glass, she turned from them and toed off her shoes, nudging them together under the bed. Clearing her throat again seemed to give them the message to make some noise.

"I can organize your transport," Elijah said mildly.

"Thanks," she said. Her shoulders were rolled forward so far forward in her discomfort that she felt hunched. To disguise it, she reached down to neaten her shoes. It was completely unnecessary, because they were already perpendicular to the carpet and side by side, but it gave her a second of mindless straightening that she needed to get her act together. "I also don't want to see any of you on my way out. Okay you can go now. Bye."

She put one hand up to her prickling nape and rubbed under her hair, then swigged from the bottle.

"Caroline-" Elijah started.

The bourbon nearly went down the wrong hole in her haste to gulp down the mouthful and spit out:

" _Bye_."

Ignoring the fact that he was a super powerful dude who could very easily whip her head off, she turned to the bed and ignored him. The sight of Klaus made her chug three big gulps of bourbon straight, and she smacked her lips, breathing hotly, as the effect of the alcohol started to dial itself up.

The door shut quietly behind her. Music started below her feet, loud enough to drown out the drums from outside and even the slosh of liquid in her hand.

Now it was just her, the booze, noise, and the unconscious hybrid that she had to fuck.

Wonderful.


	3. Chapter 3

That whole bottle of bourbon went down in record time. The weight of it all churning in her belly didn't help the nausea she was feeling so persistently, but it did make her brain dumb and hands kind of numb.

"Well." She looked down at her jeans, and reached for the button. "No time like the present, I guess."

The zipper was louder than she strictly recalled it ever having been before, and she peeled off her jeans to fold them in a single flick.

It just made sense to her to lay them set to go on the end of the bed with her hoodie. Her shoes were ready to be stepped into and tugged on beyond that, so she figured: _hey yeah I'll just leave my socks on so I don't have to stop on my way out_.

Which is obviously premeditated Hit It and Quit It behavior.

"I'm so mad at you right now," she grumbled. She decided to peel off the outer shirt, but left on her bra and tank top. It would only hinder her later (again, because she planned to get the fuck out of there as soon as his eyes were open or whenever he made her come or whatever.) "So mad. So _fucking_ mad. I can't believe this is how I find out you have real feelings for me. I can't _believe_ this is how we have to be together."

And like, sue her for wiping her watering eyes. Frustrated with herself, she sucked back a sniffle and reached for his belt.

It just wasn't fair. This wasn't the plan.

"This was not the plan," she said flatly, just so he knew. "And I'm mad about it."

She was super into what they had been doing, with the distance and the undisclosed time he had given to her. There were still things she had to do with her independence and natural youth, before she could consider anything more permanent.

Taking a breath, Caroline put both hands over her eyes. She thought of the mountain she'd been briefly on. The pretty crystals of ice hanging in dangerous spikes from the roof, and the impossible, magical radiance of the glittering frost on the miles of white. The air was cleaner there than any place she'd been since she had been turned, and it made her vampire senses tingle.

Meditating was great for panic attacks before they happened, but not so great for getting down to business with unconscious hybrids, so she had to like, surface from her hands and look at him.

But if she considered what might happen after he woke up, her head would spin clean off her neck - and then who would bestow the Lay of Waking?

"I swear," she warned him. "If you make one stupid, raunchy comment when you wake up... I swear to God, Klaus, I will rip off my own daylight ring and walk outside. I mean it."

If he knew she knew how he felt?

He'd want to talk about it.

'Them.'

He would say his pretty words and make her feel... everything. And Caroline was usually all about that, because being needed was a core aspect of her love language but like...

"This wasn't how this was supposed to go," she mourned, and rubbed her wet eyes. With a sniff, she put her faintly shaking hands down by her sides, and considered him. "I wish I had've called you more, now. Maybe I could've talked you out of... you know. Fist fighting a demigod." Even her smile was watery, even though it was real.

"I just-... always thought we'd meet by accident... somewhere pretty. Maybe Paris. Rome. Or Tokyo." Tentatively, she reached out a hand, hovering it just above his chest. When her fingers landed, she expected a reaction and got nothing. He really wasn't with the waking world; the twitching and tossing and occasional gasps for air were not reactionary.

Well, not from outward stimulating, anyway. Who knew what he could've been dreaming.

"I guess I'd better shut up and get you awake, huh?" she said softly.

Klaus' jeans gave under her fingers and she tugged them to his knees in a few short tugs, following them with his pricey boxer-briefs. Why she was surprised he wasn't even hard, she'd never know.

It just meant she'd have to like, stimulate him.

"Of course. Because why would it be easy?" Crawling onto the bed, she moved to crouch between his legs.

She spat on her hand and started jerking him roughly, but even after a few strokes she understood that her technique was lacking and not even remotely stimulating. Having no penis to examine the tactics first hand (so to speak), she huffed and shut her eyes.

"Yeah, right. So you get a blow job and a free orgasm and I get to miss out on my holiday? Sounds like this Cupid guy is a fucking sexist, Klaus. I hope you beat him up real good."

Bending, she planted her hands on either side of his hips and licked the velvet length of him into her mouth, starting to bob her head to get him going.

Things had been so hard in her life, lately, making her blatantly aware that while she had Elena and Bonnie as the very greatest friends on earth, she wasn't really a part of their team.

Team Caroline was always just kinda... Her.

The Salvatore boys were still pretty hellbent on playing the triangle game with Elena. The both of them treated lil ol' Caroline with the kind of indifference she only ever saw from the side eyes of parents toward their least favorite children. She only mattered to them when Elena asked them to, or when she was planning a party, or they needed some extra vampire muscle.

Otherwise, like usual, she was the side bit of helpful, and ignored.

A little dribble of semen touched her taste buds, and Caroline opened sleepy eyes to realize that Klaus was pretty much completely hard and ready for her.

With a slick noise, she pulled off him, licking her lips.

"Nearly there," she told him quietly. "You'd better saddle up, cowboy."

Klaus... had been the enemy, at one stage.

What did that say about her life, that the mass murdering ancient hybrid King was still her version of a Good Guy?

If, when he opened his eyes, he demanded she stayed with him, he would be such a safe harbor. A welcome reprieve. A holiday she never had to come back from. He hadn't made her feel any kind of bad about enjoying their sex in the forest.

And it had been... really, good, sex.

She could be worth _something_ , to _someone_ , right?

Could she finally be the one?

"Fuck, why am I kinda turned on right now?" she muttered, moving her hand around him.

She considered the two parts of their equation - Tab A, Slot B - and decided if he got to be warmed up, so did she.

Sliding a hand beyond the band of her still worn underwear, she rubbed at her clit like she was mad at it.

By the time he was all the way hard, she was not wet.

And she knew she should've waited until there was like, a little more to assist, but she was too drunk and anxious to care about something as trivial as enjoying the chore at hand. Besides, it was her fault for not starting sooner - she'd be half way to done already if she could just-... do it.

Scooting up, she mounted him like this was a thing she did regularly. His skin was hot between her thighs, and she reached between her legs to pull her underwear to the side. 

"Okay," she exhaled. "Okay, here we go."

She sat on the top of his dick with the tip in the low heat of her, and half expected him to wake up. He didn't. The head didn't even slide inside, it just kinda dragged her unaroused flesh.

"Fuck, come on," she muttered. She spat again, made his tip damp with saliva, and tried to get him inside her once more. Resistance. Some pain. "Ow, come on."

The pulling only gave the slightest amount, and she bobbed, encouraging her body to start behaving like she wanted it to. Flexing her hips, she battered her delicate entrance and wanted to wake Klaus up.

She wanted him to be okay. Really. She hated seeing him sick. She would do anything to make it better. 

"I hate this, Klaus," she muttered. "Wake up, already."

If she wanted him back to his usual self, her pussy needed to cooperate.

She was Caroline Freakin' Forbes. She could handle anything. So she resolved to get him in there, and wriggled her hips with a punched out grunt. It just hurt after a few more stubborn pushes, and one final one that made her sit up sharply on her knees.

"Uhm, _ow,_ " she said, bewildered. Not even the bottle of bourbon had helped with that particularly nasty sting. She checked with her fingers but there wasn't any blood - even though it had felt like a pull that might've torn something.

Okay. So she couldn't just shove him inside her. Scratch that idea.

She rubbed her clit again in hasty circles, willing some small amount of slick to come. While she waited, she summoned a pretty sex dream about him being tied up to try and get it to happen.

The fact that he was so powerful and intimidating but listened to her was a severe turn on. Like. Some really kinky fantasies usually dialed up when he was involved in them, but it was never an imbalance on who was in charge. It just depended on her mood.

His understanding of her motivations was one of the things she had learned to appreciate in her time away from him, trying to navigate the dating world in between rescuing her friends and playing happy families while she actively tried to get through university as a newly turned vampire.

The double edged fang and bi-colored monster eyes thing was always fun, but the accent made him _Cryptonite._

Out of all of those favorite things, she got precisely zero. She got the heat of him and his cock, but other than that, he was a lifeless, grey, clammy dead body she had to get to shoot inside her womb.

"I wish I could hear your voice," she told him softly. "You could turn me on like that. I would've been so wet by now I would've just sunk all the way down onto you."

 _Obviously_ , Klaus was not a stranger to being a devilishly charming man when he wanted to apply himself. He had been maddening to deal with in a way that Elizabeth Bennett would never know.

But that also made him... dangerous.

Would he manage to corner her into a relationship this time, when she had no Tyler to hide behind?

Could she resist, when she knew that he felt so deeply for her, and that he wasn't actually playing any games?

Had things changed in her mind, now that no one was asking her to play Klaus-bait, and use herself to drag him in?

Could she choose him, finally?

Would she?

Was there a choice?

She wasn't convinced that she could resist him - wasn't sure she wanted to.

The way he made her feel (needed, desired, necessary, _wanted_ ) was kind of permanent. A 'once you start, there won't be a stop' kind of deal.

And when faced with hundreds of years before her, did she really want to commit to that?

"Fuck," she grunted, and sat back, cupping her stinging flesh. She laid the other hand on the bed, breathing hard, and then slowly lowered herself face down to rest her head against his torso, ass in the air. Her head was spinning. The bourbon bubbled in her stomach. "Fuck. This is so stupid. I hate this."

Even hearing him yell at her would've been better than silence, and rapid breathing. His shirt gave way under her pushing hands and she rubbed her face on his bare stomach, wrapping her arm around him to try and ground the awful floaty feeling in her head.

When she tried to get herself wet then, without worrying about him, she couldn't focus long enough to make it happen. The thought of asking for lube was humiliating, no matter which of the siblings she managed to end up with.

"I wish you could talk to me," she whispered. "I want to hear you say it."

This felt like it was supposed to be 'I love you' sex. It felt fraudulent that she didn't love him. Not that she was incapable of imagining her 'however long it takes'; in fact, she had imagined it often. Imagined getting to sleep with him, and then actually to _sleep_ with him, curled up together, basking only in each other's glow.

"God, I've missed your voice. I've missed your smile. The fucking dimples. I hate you. I _hate_ that I missed you."

Had he skipped around her head over the years like a song she didn't quite know the words to?

Sure.

Had he featured in her dreams more frequently than she'd ever admit, both in the sexy and not sexy varieties?

Of course.

Was he the one who she thought of on lonely nights with a vibrator pressed against her clit?

Always.

But did she love him?

"I wish you could talk," she croaked. "I just need... something more." A bright idea popped into her head, and she let go of herself to reach over to the bedside to grab her phone. It had a few choice videos saved in a private, password protected file. She thought that maybe it would help with the self-lubrication thing she required.

His voice message was the first thing the device unlocked to, and her drunk thumb hit it.

" _Caroline, love_ ," he said, panting, clearly running at a pace that made the trees whip and whistle around him. " _I'm coming to see you right now. I need - I need you, sweetheart. I can't explain. I picked a fight with the wrong man. I need to make love to you right now. I - I need - your touch. I'll be there soon. Please - don't be frightened. I would never hurt you. But I need you as soon as I see you._ "

Despite profaning she wanted to hear his voice - that was not at all helpful.

It was not inspiring. He just sounded panicky and scared. It didn't sound like a declaration - it wasn't what she considered consent.

The little fission of heat she'd felt at getting him hard turned to lead inside her.

"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck. Klaus. No..."

Would they yell at her for giving up? How long had she even been there? God. What was an appropriate amount of time to try and force this sort of thing?

 _Don't think of it as force, think of it as coercion_ , floated through her brain.

Damon's face followed it.

She cringed.

Literally any amount of confidence wilted into a dried out crisp. Damon had... coerced. Compelled. He had never... asked. She'd been - willing? Mostly. But thinking he was her boyfriend, and those fabricated emotions... it had been-... not her choice.

Aaaaaand thinking about the tricky situation that whole clusterfuck had been did precisely _nothing_ to help her libido.

Resorting to porn didn't get her motor running, because by the time she selected a video Klaus was starting to go soft.

"Everything's so fucking hard, all the time," she grumbled. Wiping her eyes on her arm, she shuffled back a little and started to work him over with her hand.

She just kept spitting at it while she coaxed him back into full hardness and swiped a glob of her own saliva up inside her once he was full mast.

To be honest, even as drunk as she was, she barely felt passingly wet enough to get started. If a boy had done it to her she wouldn't let him continue.

A part of her brain told her to just _stop_ , for a second. _Get yourself ready_ , take five to _relax_ , and _then_ take a seat.

But the louder, more drunk bit was just screaming to _GET IT OVER WITH FASTER I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE._

Giving him another coat of saliva by dipping his hard dick into her mouth, she batted tears out of her eyes that had nothing to do with her gag reflex.

 _It'll be over soon_ , she told herself. _You're good at this. They all say you're good at this._

Fortifying, she swung her leg over him again, and sank slowly - and uncomfortably - down on his length. She had to take a break mid-way, every inch of him hot and thick inside her body, invading into a territory that wasn't yet prepared.

It pulled, but it wasn't unbearable.

Bobbing on the shaft, she rubbed herself again, her eyes only staring at the bit of skin on his stomach her hands had uncovered. When she had adjusted to that, her idiot channel finally producing a little gloss to work with, she was able to bounce up and down inch by inch, until her ass sat on his thighs with a slap.

"Okay," she exhaled. She stopped, took a minute to feel every inch of him tucked up inside of her, and scooped her hair back. "Okay. Here we go."

As predicted, it did not take long.

The heat of his hands on her hips felt like a brand, and Caroline still jolted when he sat up with a big gasp. His mouth was open, eyes wide, and she touched his cheeks with both hands.

Panting, he pulled her into his arms, breathing at the pulse on her throat. He hugged her solidly for a moment, hands digging into her hair. She felt him throbbing inside of her.

"Hi," she said softly. His prickles were grating against her palms and she shut her eyes, breathing a little unevenly by his ear. "Welcome back."

" _Caroline_." Just the sound of her name was enough to make her think that he was going to try and keep her, and it sent a spike of terror through her chest.

"It's okay," she offered. She put her arms around his shoulders, and he pressed a hot kiss to the side of her neck, wrapping her up in his arms to hold her tight. "You're safe. You're in New Orleans.""

"Oh, love," he murmured. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"Did the big bad of the week tell you that?" she wondered. "Or was that just something you dreamt?"

He shook his head, leaning back a little to see her.

"Caroline?" Devastation ruined the warmth on his face. Too keen eyes flicked between hers, reading her like a page on a tell-all book. "Have... have you been crying?"

Very quickly, Caroline made the decision to leave.

Klaus full body flinched when she straightened up on her knees and pulled him clear of her.

Shuffling back was easy because she was already pretty much covered up. Collected her jeans from the end of the bed, she got them on in a single swift pull as she stood up. It minimized how much he was able to see, and cut the time she would have to wait by several important seconds. Snatching her shirt, she wrestled it on while she was stepping into her shoes.

"Well! I'm gonna go now," she said mildly. "Good to see you."

The hoodie was whipped out of her hand before she could claim it.

He was dressed because she had left him mostly dressed. The still deflating hard on in his jeans was not at all subtle.

"Why were you crying?" he whispered. He wasn't even blinking, his sorrowful eyes wide. "Did someone hurt you?"

"No. I'm fine." She flexed her fingers. "Hoodie, please."

"Did - did someone-?" He lifted his foot like he meant to step forward but halted the same second she reared back, turning her body side on as though it would minimize the damage. He looked sicker than before - any pink in his cheeks bleeding down his throat. "Caroline... sweetheart, what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"You've been crying."

"I have allergies." It was painfully stupid. Vampires didn't get allergies to anything but vervain. "That's my favorite sweater, and I have a plane to catch, so can you give it back to me, please?"

All in all, very polite.

He didn't fall for the distraction.

"What have you been told?" he said, strained. "What did they say, that made you-...? When you didn't want to?"

"I didn't want you to be like that, so stop with the Disney eyes," she said firmly. "What was I supposed to do, leave? They couldn't tell me if you were suffering. We're friends. You would've helped me."

"I wouldn't have cried," he murmured. Finally, he blinked, and it made his eyes very glossy. "I'm so-"

"Give me back my hoodie now, thanks," she said, falsely bright. "I'm busy, Klaus, I need to go."

"I didn't - if I had've known the true consequence, I never would've engaged in the fight, I swear. This wasn't wasn't - planned, some ruse I'd crafted, a means to an end," he promised her lowly. "I never meant you to be upset. I never thought you'd be dragged into this at all."

"Yeah, that's fine, I get it. Classic demigod behavior. It's fine."

"Please, love," he said softly. "I never want you to cry for the things I do. I didn't know."

"Yeah, I heard you." She flexed her fingers at him more insistently. "So can you give me my sweater back?"

"You're wounded for having to aide me this way," he acknowledged. "How can I ever redeem myself to you?"

"I'm seriously already so wasted on pricey bourbon, I feel great. It's not an issue. I'm totally fine."

"You aren't," he said. "Caroline, you can't even look me in the eye."

The reason Freya's eyes reminded her of Disney was because Klaus' did too. He was all glazed with hurt and quickly batted lashes, the blue of him so bold against the rest of his face it was like technicolor.

"We're completely fine," she told him firmly.

"We aren't," he protested under his breath. "Just stay an hour or two, Caroline. We can talk."

"No. Don't wanna talk. I've gotta go. I've got things to do." Her hand fell uselessly to her side. Ordinarily she would've just yelled at him or tried to snatch her sweater.

But today was not a usual day. Today she'd found out that someone was in love with her enough that a demigod had paid attention - or whatever it was Cupid did. Shot people in the butt? She couldn't remember, and didn't care.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he promised her.

Nodding, Caroline spun and pulled open the door. She strode out of the room, trusting that her transport would be organised and that by some miracle, Klaus wouldn't chase her. She got down the stairs when she realized the music had stopped, and as far as the middle of the courtyard before he blurred to stand in front of her.

"Caroline, love-"

She dodged him, but he stepped directly in her way, making her pump the breaks hard enough that she actively stumbled back, hands flying up to protect her throat - though she wasn't sure why.

"Caroline, just wait, sweetheart." He tried to grab her hand. She twisted like he was threatening to burn her. "I can explain-"

"It's been explained. We're good. I'm going now, so bye."

"It wasn't a trick," he said desperately.

"Yeah, I know. It's fine. Move."

"I didn't do it to get you on top of me, or embarrass you, or make you do anything you didn't want, I swear."

"I know. Cupid. Nefarious, shady dude, holds a grudge. I get it. Can you please move, now?"

"Caroline," he said, a touch louder. "You're cross with me-"

"I'm not," she defended.

"You are, it's clear on your face, love. Won't you tell me why?"

"I'm not angry."

"And I'm the Pope, how do you do?"

Rolling her eyes, she put her hands on her hips and locked her fingers down to keep them from trembling.

"Ha ha. You're very funny. It's fine. _We_ are fine. It's just one of those things that happens and it's a little awkward. I get it. It's cool." It was so far beyond _not cool_. "So I've done my bit and I want to go now."

"Why?" he pressed. Then, drawling cruelly to hide his hurt: "Can't you bare to look at me now, for needing the assist out of the predicament? Does it gall you so badly to have to of lended me a hand?"

"I lended you a little more than a hand, thanks," she said sharply. She glared at him. "I want to go back to my holiday now."

"Talk to me first," he insisted.

"No," she said simply. "You were in a situation, I was happy to help."

"You were-" And then, like a dirty word: " _Crying_."

"I tripped my gag reflex when I was getting you hard," she shot back at him. "Some of us had to do all the work in there, and _I_ wasn't blissfully unconscious."

The tips of his ears went red.

"I'm a little too old to not know the difference between those two lots of tears," he grunted. "Do try pull the other one, though."

"Klaus." She firmed her voice. "I am O-KAY. You are O-KAY. We're gonna be FINE... If you get out of my way so I can get back to my holiday and hide under my blankets for a while."

He deflated.

"Do you hate me?"

"No, I don't - oh, for the love of _crap_ , stop with the Pouty McSulk face, thing, before I throw up on you," she scoffed. "It's done, I'm fine, you're alright, and I just want to go back to what we had before."

"What we had before?" he repeated.

"Yeah. Radio silence and distant memories." She thought that maybe attacking him at his raw point might help her cause; if not to break his crybaby mood, then to rile him up and get him to kick her out. He did neither, just watching her with the stupidest (re: most devastating) look of remorse she'd ever seen. "I just want to go now. Can you please move?"

"You can leave after I fix what's wrong," he muttered. "You're not fine, and I want to help. If you're angry, be angry. Say your piece, and I'll let you leave."

"There's nothing to say," she retorted. Her arms folded around herself to hide the shaking in her fingers as it moved up into her hands and forearms.

"You're disgusted, then, by what I've put you through-"

"Nope." She popped the 'p'. "You were unconscious, and you didn't know. It's not your fault."

He considered her with a tilt of his head.

"I will let you leave, but I don't want you to walk away from me like this." He shifted where he stood, hands curling and uncurling. "It isn't fair that you were upset for my mistake. I can't bare the thought of you wearing the weight of it. Especially since it was me that made you shed even a single tear. Let me make things better between us, and I'll gladly let you walk away, if that's what you wish to do."

"You don't need to worry about me tattling about the thing that could knock the o so mighty Klaus Mikealson on his ass," she said loudly. "I'm not going to tell anyone, so you can get over whatever this thing is-"

"I don't care if you spoke of the dust that incapacitated me. Mortal hands can't handle demigod weaponry."

"So why can't I catch a break, here?" she demanded.

"Because you're upset," he said with a one shouldered shrug. There was a moment of thinking, and then: "Because I care about you."

She caught her breath.

It was like getting hit in the head with a shovel. The ringing echoed in her head, but this time she understood the words. They were true, but it wasn't the whole of the truth.

It wasn't ' _I love you_ '.

"It's _fine_ ," she said, strained. "Klaus, it's been a really long day for me. It was a long day since before you even showed up, okay? I just want a holiday, and a bubble bath, and some peace and quiet from life-or-death drama-"

"You can have it," he assured her. "Once I fix what's broken between us."

"Nothing is broken! Ugh. You're so dramatic. This is like the woods, okay? It's a one time thing. It's not a big deal. It was a random hook up, it's whatever-"

"It was _not_ ," he muttered. At her paling face, the anger in him softened. "But you know that, don't you?"

"I don't know anything." There was a dangerous wobble in her lower lip.

"I don't understand." Bewildered, he lifted his hands to her as though to placate her, a wolf trying to soothe a startled doe. Like that was ever gonna work. "Just wait, love. Explain. Why are you upset?"

"Please move." She sniffed. "I really want to get out of here, now."

"Why are you running?" Too keen eyes studied her face. "After everything we've been through, you've never looked at me like this before. Why are you frightened of me now?"

"I want to go!" she blurted, a little wetter than she ideally would've liked. The first spill of tears shocked her, but more so him, because he took a step back like she'd taken a swing at his head with an ax. " _Please_ don't make me be here right now, Klaus, I really don't want to be here. I want to go. I'm embarrassed and I need to be alone. _Please_."

"Alright, alright," he said softly. He took another step back, and left his hands in the air. "It's alright, sweetheart. You go. I won't follow."

Blurring out of there, she was gone so quickly that she couldn't even get the door shut behind her. The car outside literally had a man with her name on the panel between his hands, and she dived in the backseat, laying down to cover her head with her arms and curl up into a ball.

Nothing felt good. Not even the booze had helped.

Like a very intimidating vampire, she stayed hidden beneath her own arms until she got to the airport, and cried the entire flight back.


	4. Chapter 4

"The hell've you been?" Damon snapped, closely followed by: "We've been calling all damn day!"

She'd left her phone in Klaus' bedroom. It had been oppressively quiet for her.

"I'm back a whole day early," she said flatly. "I told you I was taking a holiday."

"Well you didn't tell the bad guys," he said, bright eyes flaring. He took her by the elbow and towed her into the boarding house, sort of letting her stumble into the lounge. "Look what the cat dragged in, finally!"

"Caroline," Stefan said, severe brow creasing in worry. "You okay?"

Habitually, she wiped her face on her sleeve. She looked exactly like she'd had the weekend from hell and not a relaxing snowy holiday. Without her phone to reach out to people, she'd had to deal with the quiet, and all that meant was thinking about Klaus.

"Tired," she admitted.

"Get concealer, because you're up," Damon said. "We have a problem, and it requires a peppy-blonde-shaped bit of currency."

He crossed the room to get himself a drink, so Caroline looked to Stefan for an explanation. Apologetically, he gave it.

"There's a hunter in town," he said, folding his arms across his chest. "He took Elena to try and coax us to his trap."

"Is she okay?" Caroline said, blinking at him. "God guys, I left for not even two whole days-!"

"Long story short," Damon said with a smarmy smile. "The weapons are all coated in werewolf venom so we're a little on the risky side of things, here. We need you to go and get us some Klaus blood so we can safely walk in and out of the trap, save the girl, and get back before dinner. You've got his number, right?"

Her heart had already frozen at the mention of werewolves, because it just so happened that after that was the following request that she played Klaus bait.

Even Damon wasn't oblivious to her terrified staring. He put his drink down and frowned at her.

"What?" he prompted.

"No," she said on a breath. "I-... We are not good right now."

"Oh, for the love of-" Damon said, looking heavenward, assuredly for strength. "You scared him off, too?"

Like...

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Looking at him, really looking at him, Caroline saw his twitchy hands and grinding teeth. On one level, she understood that he was worried about Elena, but why did he think that insulting her was going to get him what he needed to save her friend?

"Go fuck yourself," she said, quite evenly. "I hope you die. I'm out of here."

* * *

Things, after that, spiraled out of control very quickly.

* * *

Dazed after rousing from a temporary death, her lashes fluttered open.

She was at home, in her lonely bed, staring at the lamp that she had not turned on. Having no need for human levels of light had taken her a short time to grasp, and seeing as her mom had died there wasn't actually a need to turn them on.

"I don't want to startle you," Klaus said softly. It didn't matter, because she sat bolt upright and gathered her sheets to her chest. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees at her desk, watching with lamp-like eyes. "I was only waiting to make sure that the venom was gone from your system, and then I'll leave. How are you feeling?"

"Venom?" she whispered, and reached up instinctively to bar her neck from his eyes. She needn't have worried, given that he was looking only at her face. "What venom?"

"The hunters that took you," he replied quietly, a twitch manifesting under his left eye. "One of them cut you with an infected weapon."

Swallowing deeply, her eyes cut toward the clock. It had been several hours since she had arrived at the boarding house.

"Elena's safe?" she asked the glowing numbers.

"As houses, with her Salvatores," he murmured. "I think you're safe now, Caroline. I'll take my leave."

The world moved. He surely saw her coming, but she didn't even realize she was out of bed. Not until her hand hand shut tightly around his bicep and she dug her heels in, staring open and wide at his face.

What she found there was shame; some trepidation. It was a look she had never seen on him before.

Her free hand cupped his scratchy face; a gentle thumb swiped the edge of his eye. 

"Don't be mad," she said, wobbly.

Every line of him tightened.

"Now, why is it when you preface a revelation with that sentence, you say something that irrevocably makes me mad?" He didn't offer a hand to comfort her, letting her take what she wanted. "What's happened now?"

_Damon happened_ , she thought, her heart squeezing in her chest. She didn't need to be conscious to understand the gist of it; Damon had broken her neck, and then someone had used her as Klaus bait. Again. Had a hunter scratched her with a wolf-laced blade? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise her.

Caroline opened her mouth to explain that she hadn't meant to bother him, and to thank him for coming to help, but what came out was:

"I know why it had to be me."

His eyes went wide, and the somber pull to his mouth turned shocked. There suddenly wasn't enough air in the room and she sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, releasing the death grip she had on his arm. It took her a minute, but she eventually swayed hard enough away from him that she could retake her seat on the end of her bed, never blinking to watch him process that.

"Who told you?" he croaked.

One shoulder lifted in a half-hearted shrug. Her breath was coming in deep, but the sensation of her lungs felt constricted.

"Does it matter?" she exhaled. "Is it true?"

"Does that matter?" he retorted. " _Who_ told you?"

God, why had she even said anything? She had done so well not to tell him in the compound! Like-! Fuck! What was it about him that just made her mouth decide to do the words thing! The thought of having him know had been - _terrifying_. She had thought that he'd slip into some impossible to ignore, dashing romantic type - but the man before her wasn't in any way suave. 

He was pissed.

"It doesn't matter who told me," she echoed faintly. "Is it true?"

Throat bobbing around a swallow, he lifted a hand to his face and gave it a scrub. When he reappeared, both hands tucked nonchalantly at the small of his back.

"Well," he said, very coolly. "I suppose now I understand why you looked at me with such horror. I imagine the thought of someone like me paying you any such attention would be very alarming, indeed. Glad we've worked that out. I'll see myself out."

Caroline stiffened as he spoke, and sprang to her feet when he turned to leave. Feeling panicked and unsure of why it felt so oppressively awful to have him go, she uttered his name.

" _Klaus_." The desperate sound of it was pathetic. Once upon a time, she'd asked Tyler to choose her; to stay. It was the exact same note of terror and pleading, and it made him stop in his tracks and turn to face her.

His expression was unreadable, but she could decipher that he wasn't mad at her, at least.

What could she say?

Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.

What was she gonna say?!

She didn't love him like that! She wasn't sure she could. There were so many perfectly logical reasons to just let him walk out, but the merest threat of it had made her stomach lurch and heart squeeze into a knot.

Brows lifted, Klaus waited, watching the inner turmoil play out on her face.

What the hell was she going to say? The fact was, what she felt toward him wasn't love.

It wasn't pure, or dainty, or sweet. Whatever she felt for him, it certainly didn't come across as anything holy.

But maybe...

Maybe that was the shape that his love took?

Nothing about him was pure, dainty or sweet. Between them was fire and blood, all things red and decadent. Heat. Passion. Right, wrong, the churn of the difficult in between. Darkness marked their path so the light could burn even brighter.

The intensity of what she felt - what she knew he was capable of feeling - it was anything but _dainty_. And she'd never had much of a sweet tooth, anyway.

But she didn't love him... Did she?

"I have-" she blurted. "There are-! Feelings! I know that-... I just- I just didn't know that you-... I mean, I knew you had _some_ , I just didn't know they were like, you know, serious."

"You told me you knew how I felt," he muttered. The tight pin of his shoulders relaxed a little. He pursed his lips into a pout. "You called me out on it. You told me you knew that I was in-... I had feelings, for you."

Her lids fluttered to try and keep the burst of tears away. So she had to hear it from someone else, that he loved her? He couldn't even say it to her face?

"I was mostly bluffing. I didn't think I was-" Her rapid blinking did enough to keep the tears from pooling, but she could tell from his expression that he'd seen the glassiness in her eyes. "It's -... Whatever. Uhm, sorry. If you wanted to go, you can."

"What didn't you think?" he prompted. He wasn't blinking, just watching her with the entire weight of his thousand year old focus honed in on her every reaction. She was an idiot moth to his flame, and couldn't turn away. "And what do you mean, you didn't think my feelings were serious?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it," she amended quickly. "It's, uh, it's a mistake, that's all. I don't know why I said anything. I should've just - not said anything."

"Why?" Planted like a tree in her doorway, she got the distinct impression that he wasn't going to move unless he got answers. That was the bit that worried her, because she was pretty sure that he could read her face the same way she could read his. 

"Why what?" she squeaked, then rubbed her chest, trying to do some outward soothing of her rioting heart. 

"Why shouldn't you have said anything? What's changed between us now?" One solitary blink. The corners of his lips turned down. "You were already running and hiding from me."

"I wasn't running," she retorted with a fraction of the petulance she felt that was due.

"You cried, and you begged me to leave," he reminded her. He was hurt. And still not blinking, like every reaction she gave him was piecing together a bigger image than the one he currently had. 

"That's not running," she said forcefully. "That's - getting some air."

"Well now you've had some time to breathe," he drawled. "Why would saying something to me now be a mistake? How can I remedy the issue between us if I don't know what it is?"

"Issue? There's no issue. I just- I just, you know. Thought that if I left you alone long enough, eventually you would forget about me." Crap. The Truth. "It's not a big deal. It happens."

The way he looked at her from under his lashes should've been considered some kind of war crime. It was some kind of mix of knowing and pity that made her fold her arms across her stomach in an attempt to keep her tender underside protected.

"Never," he said throatily. "I could never forget you."

Shrugging again, she scrunched the fabric of her shirt and just kind of, stood there. 

"Thanks for coming to help tonight," she said softly. Her momma hadn't raised a heathen. He had done a good thing and deserved, at the very least, a thank you.

"Always," he replied.

And that...

That might've been the right answer.

Because he really would, wouldn't he? Always come, if she stretched out her hand and coaxed him over? He would, and had, always found some kind of way to be the knight in slightly blood-stained armor. He'd been bad, sure, but like - not as bad as he could've been, probably.

And sure, he might not have adhered to her moral high ground, but he'd been the one to stand at her side and keep her safe.

Others had never bothered.

"I should go," he asked, lowering his head. "If you want."

"I don't know," she admitted. Sending him away felt wrong, but asking him to stay was just too, too scary. What if he chose to walk away, like the other people had? Or more terrifying again - what if he didn't? The prospect of being loved forever was not something she could imagine ever taking lightly, and if she wasn't clear on whether or not they were gonna be endgame... would he let her change her mind?

Awkward never knew a silence like that one: two idiots trying to talk about the feelings they pretended not to have, that the other already knew about.

"Could you-?" she said on a breath. Her throat swelled with emotion, and obstructed the words.

"What?" 

"Can you-...?" This time, her heart was thrashing like a caged bird, actively trying to bash out of her ribs. She fiddled with the end of her shirt, and ducked her eyes to it, chewing each lip and trying to find the energy to summon the words swirling in her head.

"Caroline," he prompted, voice gravelly. "Ask me."

Maybe it made her a coward, but she couldn't look at him.

"I just-" She shrugged again. Licked her lips. Dug her heels into the ground. "You don't have to, I just-... I just wanted to hear you say it."

_Silence_.

Holy God. Kill her now.

The bang of her heart made her head rush, all the blood draining from her face. What if there had been some kind of misunderstanding? What if he actually didn't love her? What if Cupid had literally meant for him to sleep with the person he liked the most, and she just so happened to fit the category at the time? Maybe he didn't love her after all!

Why did that thought punch the air out of her lungs?

"It's fine," she said quickly, shoulders hiking around her ears. "Uhm- you can go, it's fine, I'll just - I mean, thanks for the save, tell Hayley I said hi-"

"I love you."

Warmth flooded her stomach, pouring into every limb and nerve in her body. The echo of his pleasant voice rung in her ears like someone had hit a very loud bell next to her head.

Sighing, she deflated, managing to peek up at him from under her lashes. He waited, watching, everything about him calculating, but in no way deceptive. The set of his shoulders was rigid, but his hands were trembling faintly at his sides.

Well that just wouldn't do.

One step felt like she had leapt over a mountain, but the second one only felt like skipping over a hill. Three steps put her within striking distance, and the fourth step put her in his sphere.

Her fingers tucked under his palms and gave a gentle squeeze before she lifted each to her face. A reverent kiss was pressed against both of his middle knuckles before she looked him in the eye.

"Say it again," she whispered.

"I love you, Caroline," he murmured. He changed the grip on her digits to lead her fingers to his own mouth, returning each kiss she had paid him.

Goosebumps flooded her back and she felt the return of all those horrible, throat clogging emotions. Her nails gently grazed his stubble, scritching up to card through the ends of his hair.

She had never been more fascinated by the tiniest hint of yellow in a werewolf's eyes, before. Even though she was pretty sure it meant something about hunger. Her thumb stroked the tender skin beneath each eye and made his lashes shutter in a vain attempt to hide it.

He had freckles. They were just... so freaking cute. She'd noticed them before, but like, not with this much detail. With the very barest pressure of her hands, she brought him in to press a tiny kiss on the height of his cheekbone, slotting her temple against his to keep him close.

"I don't want you to stay," she whispered. At his sudden tension, she quickly amended: "I don't want to stay here either. This town sucks."

"It's surely too small for you." He breathed out a puff of laughter, and tentatively put his hands on her back to bring her in bodily against him. Each palm smoothed over her shoulders to wrap her up in as much of his steely arms as possible without squashing her, and she made a place for herself cradling the back of his head in her hands. "What did you have in mind?"

Her eyes drifted shut.

"I mean, I am due a holiday," she said, mock-thoughtfully. She tilted back just a fraction, cocking an eyebrow as his fingers momentarily dug into her back. "Someone ruined my last one."

"What a prick," he teased.

A smile broke on her face, mirrored by his. The dimple that impressed on his cheek got a fond little stroke, and she found herself tracing the edges of his gorgeous lips.

"You know your way around the world," she commented. "Will you share it with me? Just - just for a little while? I have some things that will need doing here, so maybe-... Maybe like a week? Is that okay?"

"It would be," he rumbled, pressing a kiss to the pad of her thumb. "My absolute pleasure."

With a low hum, she guided their mouths together for a long, simple kiss. There was a spark that flared to life in her chest, and Caroline thought that if she didn't fall in love with him by the end of that week, she'd never fall in love again.

"Oh, but before we go," she mentioned, detaching from his lips. She wet her own, batting innocent lashes at him. "I have an itty bitty errand to run."

"Mm?" he hummed, dazed and mild.

"Damon Salvatore," she said with a tiny scowl. Under his left eye twitched, so she gave it a little kiss. She trailed a line of them up to the lobe of his ear, pressing the entire length of her body up to his. "Needs to be put in his place. Wanna watch?"

When she pulled back, his dreamy smile had stretched into something a little more toothy, and the dimple was back with a vengeance.

"You couldn't stop me if you tried," he vowed throatily, and kissed her again.

* * *

For the record, she fell in love with him less than twenty four hours later.

* * *

A certain demigod with a bow and arrow congratulated himself on a job well done.


End file.
